We had hoped that Amazon would stand up to this legally baseless bullying and support their customers. But, instead, they caved, and allowed publishers to deactivate the Kindle's text-to-speech capabilities using the device's built-in DRM.

Presumably, Amazon and The Author's Guild hoped this back-room deal would go unnoticed. Instead, consumers have taken a stand and formed The Reading Rights Coalition:

We posted our initial thoughts about the proposed Google Book Search settlement when it was announced in October 2008. Since that time, the official notice to members of the class has been approved by the court (available online here). This is still probably the best introduction to the 130+ page settlement for those who own a copyright in a book and are wondering what this settlement will mean for his or her copyrights.

But most of us are probably more interested in what this proposed settlement will mean for the future of books, generally. And make no mistake, that is what's at stake here: the relationship between future generations and all the books ever written by previous generations. For those who are concerned about this question, there are two recent articles that you should read.

UPDATE (Jan. 2009): The official class notice has now been published. Anyone who owns a copyright and has questions about the settlement should start there. Also, I strongly recommend Prof. James Grimmelmann's analysis of the settlement.

Today, Google announced a settlement with authors and publishers in the class action lawsuits over Google Book Search. The settlement still needs to be approved by a New York federal court, but under the plan, Google will:

pay authors and publishers $125 million, part of which will be used to create a Book Rights Registry allowing copyright owners to register their works and receive a share of subscriptions, book sales and ad revenues;

allow users to purchase full books, saved to an "electronic bookshelf;"

will offer institutional subscriptions, including a free online portal for public libraries;

will point users to locations to buy or borrow searched books.

The settlement also says that authors and publishers will be able to activate "preview" and "purchase" modes for books that are in-print and copyrighted, as well as monetize out-of-print books that are digitized by Google.

The news recently has been full of reports that Amazon's e-book reader, the Kindle, is doing better than expected. Analyst Mark Mahaney from Citibank says Amazon is on track to sell about 380,000 Kindles this year, and says the Kindle "is becoming the iPod of the book world," with sales expected to hit $1 billion by 2010.

For it's part, Amazon remains coy about releasing the actual numbers, so it might be best to take these predictions with a grain of salt — and sales of the Kindle haven't come close to the numbers for the iPod. But Amazon has reported that, of titles carried in both paper and electronic form, the e-books comprise 10% of sales, a percentage that is likely to grow.